“Falstaff plays dead on the battlefield,” nodded James. “Then defends his cowardice.”
The yacht kids had their own game. It was called Memorize Shakespeare.
“Demerit, demerit, demerit,” said Rafe grumpily.
BY LUNCHTIME ON day three we had a food shortage. Someone had left the largest cooler open and gulls perched on the edges, ripping at bread bags with their powerful beaks. Fragments of fruit and cheese littered the sand, and soon even those had been snatched—the gulls were nothing like deer. They didn’t scatter when we yelled, or if they did, it was mostly for show. They came right back.
They got up in our grills, pecking. Gobbling.
So we gave up.
I felt bitter about a packet of cookies I’d been saving.
“We need to make a supply run,” said Terry, when the finger-pointing ended. “Two of us have to go upriver.”
“Or we could go back now,” suggested Rafe. “I miss flush toilets.”
“No way,” said Jen. “I’m not done with James.”
Terry shot her a wounded look. She ignored it.
“Let’s draw straws,” said David.
We used dune grass. We didn’t pull it out—Jack warned us not to hurt the plants—but snipped it neatly with a penknife. The shortest blades went to Terry and Rafe, who carried the empty coolers into a boat and began to row. Terry was visibly sulking.
Once the boat disappeared up the creek, a few of us strolled over to where the yacht kids were feasting on lobster rolls. Dee’d found some hand sanitizer near the chef’s table and was rubbing it on her body like sunscreen—her own supply must have run out. Sukey and Jen and I picked cans of soda from the yacht kids’ cooler, then sat beside Tess under the shade of her umbrella as Low loomed over us, potentially ogling. No room left on her beach blanket.
“It’s our last night,” she said, dipping a shrimp appetizer in red sauce. “We head to Newport in the morning.”
“So soon?” said Sukey.
“Really?” asked Jen.
They both sounded disappointed.
“Supposed to leave yesterday,” said Tess, chewing. “But James talked them into staying. For some reason.”
Sukey and Jen looked at each other. Sukey took a swig from her can, extended one of her long legs, pointed the toes, turned the foot this way and that. Jen grabbed a shrimp from Tess’s cup and popped it in her mouth.
I stared at the shrimps’ little black eyeballs on their stalks.
“Watch. They’ll be fighting over who gets to hook up with that Aryan douchebag,” said Low, as he and I walked away.
When push came to shove, the yacht kids were just too WASP for him. He was a jewel of Kazakh youth, he liked to say—studied history so he could boast about Mongolian hordes. He’d mailed a cheek swab to some genetic-testing service, and the results suggested he was Genghis Khan’s nephew.
Some generations removed. But basically, yeah, he said.
Jack and I went down the beach so he could look for periwinkles (rough, northern yellow, and European, he informed me). He was a bit afraid of the waves, so he didn’t wade in the surf the way I did. Instead he sat by a tide pool for hours, searching for fish and other small creatures. He carefully replaced each rock he moved, worried that he might hurt a crab.
Me, I sat and gazed at the breakers and sky. That was my preferred activity at the seaside. I tried to disappear into the stretches of water and air. I pushed my attention higher and higher, through the atmosphere, till I could almost imagine I saw the earth. As the astronauts had when they went to the moon.
If you could be nothing, you could also be everything. Once my molecules had dispersed, I would be here forever. Free.
Part of the timeless. The sky and the ocean would also be me.
Molecules never die, I thought.
Hadn’t they told us that in chemistry? Hadn’t they said a molecule of Julius Caesar’s dying breath was, statistically speaking, in every breath we took? Same with Lincoln. Or our grandparents.
Molecules exchanging and mingling, on and on. Particles that had once been others and now moved through us.
“Evie!” said Jack. “Look! I found a sand dollar!”
That was the sad thing about my molecules: they wouldn’t remember him.
WHEN WE GOT back the galley staff had switched from lunch to dinner. The sky was banded with faint stripes of pink, and two yacht parents were swimming—a rare event. I saw our green rowboat slip out of the tangle of reeds and brush that marked the mouth of the creek, move into the delta.
There were three passengers now, not two.
“Who’s that?” asked Jack, squinting toward the boat. I couldn’t tell.
Most of our group was over with the yacht kids, where there were food and drinks to be foraged. Only Low and Val hung around our pavilion. As we padded across the sand toward them, our wet shoes hanging from our bent fingers, I saw something looming—something elaborate and dark.
They’d built a massive sandcastle, a tower that rose to a point at the top. It had a circular base and row after row of shelf-like layers ascending in a spiral. They stood on either side of it, sand in their hair and caked under their fingernails, holding cooking pots and spatulas.
“Came to me in a vision,” said Low.
“Vision,” said Val.
“Of a tower,” said Low.
“I can see that,” I said.
“It’s cool,” said Jack, staring up.
“Huh,” said Low, as he turned to look at the boat. “Wait. Is that Alycia?”
We barely recalled what she looked like.
We waved and waited as the boat drew near. Rafe handled the oars as Terry jumped out and dragged the bow up onto the sandbank, and Alycia, wearing a long silken dress and silver pumps, stepped delicately onto the sand.
The ocean breeze blew her flimsy gown against her body. Hip bones jutted out on either side of her concave stomach.
I’d once seen a picture of sacred cows on the Ganges. Starving.
“What’s with the outfit?” I asked.
“No time to change,” she said. “Had to make a quick getaway.” She kicked the pumps off, pulled the dress over her head. There she stood in a lacy bra and butt-floss thong.
Some yacht dads gazed our way.
“Evie!” stage-whispered Jack to me. “She’s naked!”
“Listen, kid,” said Alycia. “What was your name again?”
“Jack?” said Jack.
“Right, right. Well, Jack, I can show you naked if you want. But this isn’t it. See this piece of fabric? They call it underwear.”
“But I can see your regina.”
“Jack, it’s your lucky day.”
She turned from us, splashed through the shallows, and dove. Graceful as a dolphin.
The yacht dads rubbernecked. She front-crawled out past the breakers.
“Why is my day lucky?” asked Jack.
I tousled his hair.
“So she was with that older man in the dive bar in town,” said Rafe, coming up the sandbank with the smallest cooler. “She was giving him, like, a lap dance. Her dad walked in and freaked. Saying stuff about arresting the guy. He wanted to press charges. For rape. Only statutory, obviously.”
“Rape,” nodded Val. “But only statutory.”